


humanity

by Clockwork_Castaway



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Danny Lives AU, F/F, I didn't tag Jon because I don't care but he's also here, Jane is her own warning tbh, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Stranger-Typical Violence, Trypophobia, also the Jane/Nikola is mostly implied but it's definitely there, lots of body parts getting swapped out here folks!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24575644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork_Castaway/pseuds/Clockwork_Castaway
Summary: Emotion is a fundamentally human experience, and Nikola finds it fascinating.
Relationships: Nikola Orsinov/Jane Prentiss
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	humanity

**Author's Note:**

> So last night I doodled Nikola per a friend's request, and this morning I became possessed with the urge to write this fic. Obviously since this is Nikola's POV it's going to be fucked up and there's no conceivable way I've remembered all the possible triggers so please read carefully. That said, I hope you all enjoy!

Nikola looks in the mirror, mornings, and frowns internally until she’s painted or sewn her smile on. Sometimes it doesn’t come out right. That bothers her, but at least she can choose her face each day, unlike those long-ago days when she was someone else, a boring human who could, in the end, only be himself no matter how good an actor he was. From time to time, she still dons that rejected, cast-off skin, slipping back into her long-ago persona to take the spotlight and reemerge with a pretty wig, some lovely eyes, or an adorable new skin. 

Sometimes she takes prizes not just for herself, but for her comrades in the Circus of the Other. It is hard to find skin that fits her right, with her too-long neck and ever-more-warped limbs, difficult to make her wigs stay firmly in place. She is good at altering and stitching skins to fit her unusual body, but sometimes she prefers to practice on others. 

The man whose eyes were once a warm, frankly boring brown complains of an inability to see straight. Nikola reminds him that she was very kind not to kill him and take his lovely skin, that he ought not to whine over a few small complications. He nods and ducks his head, trying to hide the baby blue doll-eyes Nikola had given him. That will not do. She wrenches his head up and suggests that perhaps he would prefer to part with his skin, to assume a  _ real _ role in her lovely circus. That always sends him frantic; he apologizes and begs for forgiveness, and Nikola, against her better judgment, does not call in others to help her unmake- what was his name? Danny, yes. A boring name, but how can Nikola begrudge him his attachment to it when she herself clings to the name her father, creator, and first victim bestowed on her long ago? 

She likes Danny, and so she lets him stay mostly-himself, does not force a role on him when he’s not yet ready. Nikola is a good friend like that, a considerate friend, and she wants Danny to be happy. She knows he will be happier once he gives up his humanity and name, but she knows it’s hard, so she tries to help him along gently. She gifts him new wigs and helps him put them on because she knows it is hard for humans, with their sensitive scalps, to sew their own wigs on straight. He hardly ever cries during costume changes anymore. Nikola is proud of him. And yet...

Occasionally she finds Danny tucked into some forgotten corner, scratching frantically at his eyes. He can’t harm them, of course. Glass eyes are not so easily damaged. Still, that won’t do. He is coming apart at the seams in all the wrong ways and has begun to have screaming fits, sometimes, because the throbbing of his eyes and the itching of his often-replaced scalp has become unbearable. He will have to part with what is left of his human self soon, like it or not. Nikola will help with that too, and she knows her friend will feel better after. They will be the same, then. He won’t be lonely anymore, the only real human in the Circus, and won’t that be lovely? He’ll be so  _ happy _ . She almost can’t wait to see it. 

Happiness is such an interesting thing, and so wonderfully fluid and subjective. Nikola remembers, fondly, the talks she used to have with her dear, dear friend the Flesh Hive about it. Now, what  _ was _ her name? Flesh Hive was merely a title, like Ringmistress, but- Ah, yes. Jane. The Flesh Hive’s human name was Jane. 

Nikola got on well with Jane, though they didn’t know each other long. It was after Jane became the Flesh Hive that they met, and Nikola sought her out more because she was fascinated by the stories of a woman full of worms than because she was looking for a friend. Yet, when she approached Jane and the worms surged up to meet her only to fall away, unable to make a home in her plastic body, Jane looked at her with something like sorrow.

“How awful,” Jane had murmured. “Their love couldn’t reach you even if you desired it.”

For the first time, Nikola felt a pang of longing for humanity. Maybe that was why she kept coming around, inserting herself into Jane’s life like she was searching for something she couldn’t name. It helped that Jane never seemed bothered by her being there. When Nikola appeared, Jane would merely smile faintly - or, well, Nikola assumed it was a smile; the worms made it hard to tell - and accept her presence. 

A few times, Nikola brought Jane to the Circus. Her dear friend was appropriately intrigued by the different acts, by the ever-growing collection of costumes, and she was very careful not to let her cute little worms damage any of the most important costumes.

Nikola even introduced Jane to Danny, not because she expected them to get along, but because she knew Jane would be interested in what Nikola has been and is creating in the being that is not  _ quite _ Danny Stoker anymore. Of course, Danny was afraid of Jane, though he tried so hard to be brave and not show it. He shied away when Jane reached out to him, but didn’t run. 

“So lovely,” Jane said, “so  _ lonely. _ ”

Danny made no sound when a single worm pushed its way under his skin, only stared at Nikola with his pleading, empty doll-eyes. Nikola cupped his cheek with her hand and made him bear it, watching him fracture until Jane called her child back to the Hive. 

“They couldn’t reach him,” Jane said later. “He is still flesh, but he is no longer a home, not even for himself.”

Nikola is confused by that, a bit, but she assumes it is the Hive that put this in Jane’s mind, and therefore Nikola, a Stranger, can never hope to understand Jane’s logic. Home to Nikola is the Circus, which is also a not-home. Nikola is a name, and Nikola is her, but at the same time it is just what she calls herself, the same way that she chose to use “she” instead of “he” when she was reborn. It means little to her. She has a role and a name and a home, an imitation body and pronouns to match it, but she is estranged, distant, from all of those things. 

Jane, though, knew who she was. She became the Flesh Hive, a home for the little beings that writhed inside her, and for her it was not like putting on a costume. The Hive  _ was _ Jane, down to her core, and that identity would never be cast off for another. It was alien and uncomfortable and  _ beautiful _ , and Nikola adored Jane, admired her total and complete  _ becoming _ as Jane admired her ability to change costume and identity each day. They loved each other as polar opposites who could never fully understand each other and did not need to. It was enough to share and delight and experience, until- until Jane was gone. 

Nikola despises the Archivist not only because of what he stands for, not only because of his predecessor’s actions, but because he took Jane away. Perhaps knowing what his kind did to Jane makes her a touch crueler than she would ordinarily be, but who can say what she would have done were Jane still alive? As things are, Jane is dead, Nikola is going to end the world, and the Archivist  _ sobs  _ when Nikola describes what she is going to do to him. Yes, she will skin him, and with how his powers have grown it is possible he will be conscious until the end, how lovely! She takes delight in how he shrinks in on himself, in the unmasked anguish of his unnatural eyes. The Archivist will suffer, and he will deserve it, and Nikola may, for the first time since Jane went away, feel truly happy when she dances the world new in her enemy’s skin. 

With the Archivist as her captive, Nikola finds herself surprised sometimes by unexpected sideshows. The first time the Archivist sees Danny, the circus is shrouded in twilight and the Archivist whisper-cries another name into the shadows around his gag, a name that makes Danny step close so the Archivist can see his deep-red hair, his false eyes. 

Danny is desperate and the Archivist is horrified. Nikola is intrigued and so does not disturb them. She watches Danny remove the Archivist’s gag, watches as he helps the Archivist drink. The Archivist looks haunted. The Archivist does not Know who Danny is, but he can guess. 

“What did you call me?” Danny asks, once the Archivist can speak. “Why-? Who  _ is _ that?” 

“Tim,” the Archivist whispers, “he- we work together, he- he would never tell me why he joined the Institute.” 

Nikola had forgotten about Tim. What a funny fellow, that Tim! Perhaps she should search him out, bring him here… But Danny is staring blankly, and the Archivist forces compulsion into his shaking voice.

“ _ What is your name _ ?”

Nikola watches Danny answer. He falls on his knees and cries, head against the Archivist’s legs, for a long time. The Archivist cannot even reach out to comfort him. 

When Danny picks himself up and turns away, he forgets to replace the Archivist’s gag. Nikola slips from the shadows, looming over the small and cowering figure bound to a wooden chair. 

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” she says. “I had hoped...well, no matter! Would you like to watch when I skin him? Maybe it will make you feel better.”

The Archivist breaks. “No, don’t hurt him, please, it wasn’t his fault-”

“No,” Nikola agrees, snarling. “This is all  _ your _ fault, Archivist.”

If she finally agrees that Sarah can use just a few nails to ensure the Archivist stops squirming so much, well, who can fault her? Everything is his fault, and he screams so beautifully. 

She faults herself sometime later, when she goes to look for Danny and can’t find him. She has no idea where he’s disappeared to, and she doesn’t have time to really search for him because while she’s distracted, the Archivist disappears too. 

Danny is lucky he isn’t there. If Nikola finds him, she’ll tear his skin off barehanded simply for existing in her path. Not to mention for ruining her plan - if, in fact, it was Danny who spirited her prize away. Nikola rather suspects it wasn’t. The room the Archivist had been kept in swirls when she looks at it in a way that is neither of the Stranger nor the Eye. 

She considers and executes alternate plans. Her dance is drawing near, and the world will be remade. She won’t need Jane or Danny in that world. She won’t miss them then, will she? She doesn’t miss them now, does she? 

It doesn’t matter. The world will be changed, and Nikola will not feel even a pinprick of sorrow for the human she has not been in a long, long time, not an ounce of longing for the companionship she’d once shared with her almost-human friends. 

Very soon, everything will end, and Nikola will be, well and truly, confusingly and unknowably, happy. 


End file.
